Tejasvi Surya flays Bengaluru Metro Managing Director for 'illogical' fare increase

Bengaluru, Oct 9 (IANS) Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya on Thursday criticised the Managing Director of the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) J. Ravishankar for the "illogical" fare hike.

He demanded to rectify the "anomalies" and re-fix the fares of Namma Metro.

Surya, BJP National Yuva Morcha President, in his letter stated, "On a careful perusal of the report, it appears that BMRCL gravely erred in calculation which resulted in illogical request for 105 per cent increase in fares. As you are aware, commuters and urban experts have also pointed out certain discrepancies in the report. Despite clarifications issued at your end, many glaring mathematical errors persist which require your urgent intervention."

"As a result of the failure of both BMRCL and Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) in ensuring a reasonable and affordable fare revision which would promote usage of public transportation, the common man is suffering on a daily basis with increase in fares up to 82 per cent on selected routes which are frequently used -again without any basis," Surya slammed.

It appears that , the error has crept in due to an incorrect calculation of the operating expenses in 2017 by deviating from the method captured in column no 9 of the table 3.1 of the report and arriving at 0.38 , which is alien to the data available in the report, he noted.

He said that percentage of fare increase in maintenance and administration cost, which should have been calculated at 23.7 per cent, has been wrongly calculated as 73.16 per cent.

Further taking to social media X, Surya stated, "Even High School students do better mathematical calculations than what BMRCL did for fare revision. Have written to the Managing Director of BMRCL to address and rectify the anomalies in the revised metro fare structure."

"The Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) report, which was released by BMRCL after a prolonged delay and only after my intervention in the High Court of Karnataka, contains multiple errors - some of which are basic mathematical miscalculations.

BMRCL has implemented an "illogical fare increase" of 105 per cent which is not in consonance with the FFC recommendation too. The actual fare increase is around 50-55 per cent with correct application of the formula given by FFC itself," Surya pointed out.

In one particular instance, the Maintenance and Administration cost was shown to have increased by a staggering 366 per cent, whereas the actual increase should be around 118.5 per cent, Surya stated.

--IANS

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